13. Helen #2
“I don’t give a damn what my dad thinks,” I snapped.
“School might be neutral territory, but outside of that, he could still decide to have me killed, Drake.”
I flinched at her words, slapped by the reality of that statement. Nausea rose in my gut at the imagery of that possibility.
“Or the other way around. I imagine the Montgomery clan would cut my head off. The French always liked a guillotine, didn’t they?” Her swift smack to the back of my head knocked a morbid chuckle from my lips. “Alright, fuck. I wasn’t going to tell my family.”
She rose from the bed. I watched, admiring the length of her spine and the delectable curve of her ass as she pulled her clothes back on. Her honey-brown hair spilled around her shoulders like swirls of chocolate melting on her pale skin, still slightly flushed from our hours in bed.
“We… we can’t tell anyone, Drake.” She turned around, biting her lip. The reticence in her eyes tugged at my heartstrings. “If we’re going to continue this when we return to St. Henry’s in a few weeks, no one can know about us.”
Shooting from the bed, I blurted, “I’m not ashamed of you.”
“No, that’s not it.” Her shoulders dropped. “With our history, someone will talk. Our families will find out. I can’t risk what my parents would do to you after graduation.”
In that moment, I understood, despite the agony that swept through my insides in their wake. No part of me wanted to keep Helen Montgomery a secret. The world needed to know that the brilliant, dazzling, burgeoning mafia princess was mine.
“And I wouldn’t want to risk you,” I admitted.
We kissed and promised not to meet again until school started. But her words, that entire conversation, stuck with me, plagued me. I grew sick with it, feverish and gnarled on the inside like a restless creature.
When school resumed for our seventh and final year, that conversation festered inside my mind.
The knowledge that we couldn’t keep our relationship after school poisoned the thing beating in my chest. It didn’t stop me from meeting Monty in secret, of coveting her and wishing that she could be mine forever.
But it hurt those feelings, burned them at the edges.
Months went by. On the outside, Helen Montgomery and Drake Graham remained staunch rivals for top marks and avoided one another in public or classes.
Behind closed doors, she was mine. I made her curse in French when my tongue was buried between her thighs.
It was my name she moaned when she came.
Even on the silent nights when we met just to do something simple like sit and do homework in comfortable silence, she was mine.
But I couldn’t keep her.
By the winter holidays, I knew what I had to do.
Once we stepped off school grounds at the end of the semester, our lives would deviate.
Same circles, same world, different tasks and responsibilities.
Helen would be a crime princess and I’d be another rotten soldier until Dad forced me into his shoes.
Her mother would order to have my head if they even thought I’d laid a hand on her. My dad would make Monty vanish if he had an inkling she was a distraction from his priority missions. I’d never let that happen.
“The end-of-year dance is coming up,” she whispered one night from our hidden table in the back of the library. The tip of her shoe rubbed along the side of my leg under the table, and I shifted in my seat.
“And? Who are you going with?” I dropped the book I hadn’t been reading on the table. She looked up from her stack of open books. Her glare sent a shiver down my spine. “I’m sure loads of blokes have asked you out.”
“I can’t go with who I want to go with.” She pulled down the sleeves of her oversized sweater. One of mine I’d snuck into her bag weeks ago. “I suppose I’ll go with Brooke.”
“Hm, fair enough.”
“And you?”
“Me what?” My face twisted as if the books stank. As old as some of them were in that ancient, musty library, it wasn’t far off.
“Who are you going to the dance with?” Monty bit her bottom lip, not making eye contact. She fiddled with one of her three drinks on the table, skimming her finger over the lip of her coffee cup.
A scoff worked its way up my throat. “I’m not going at all. Last time I went to a school dance, I stumbled into the library and got slapped.”
“Rightly so.” Monty’s nose scrunched up cutely. She’d slap me again if I told her how adorable she looked when her face puckered like that.
Lifted onto my elbows, half over the table, I grinned widely for her. “We’re in the library now. Would you like to go again?”
Monty blushed the loveliest shade of pink before hiding her face behind a book. “Hush, Drake. Someone might overhear you.”
I plucked the book from her hand, memories of that fateful night swimming in the heated air. One little tease, one slap, but so, so many mistakes. I dropped her book, uttering an apology she only rolled her eyes at.
“I won’t be there, but I’m sure you’ll look beautiful. You always do.” She kicked me under the table before hiding behind her book again. I relished in the simple joy of watching her read for however long I had the privilege.
I loved her, I knew. And it would end badly, potentially dangerous, for us if we continued. Word getting out of our relationship had deadly consequences hovering over my neck like a temporarily stayed executioner’s blade.
I loved her, and because of that, I had to hurt her one last time. Though it tore me apart to consider it. Because of our misplaced, unfortunate romance, I’ll have to rip us both apart. How do I tear my obsession, my infatuation with her from the center of my being where she’d taken root?